1.
The moment that Fae
recognized her brother’s handwriting on the note that slipped into her line of
sight, the little Nephilim knew that she was in trouble of a kind she’d never
imagined she’d be in.
“Fae,” the human
woman’s voice was tightly controlled. Fae wasn’t sure if it was because she was
about to cry, or about to stab someone’s earhole with an arrow; both seemed
pretty possible, and Fae wasn’t quite at the right angle to see whether or not
Morhea had her quiver.
“Fae, what is
this?”
Fae’s eyes
scanned the letter quickly, just to make sure she was dealing with exactly what
she thought she was dealing with.
Yep. That’s
exactly what she thought it was. And she felt the keen urge to smack herself in
the face. How is it, she thought, that
I’m the one who’s barely spent any time in the human world, but he’s the one
that didn’t figure a note like that would upset her?
Unsure how to
answer her own question, Fae decided to adopt the rhetoric of Hannah Jaeger’s
eldest daughter: because he’s male, that’s how.
Still, she had
to think of something to say—something that
wouldn’t require too much explaining. Think Fae, think!
And then her
face brightened and she picked the letter up off of the book she was reading
and grinned widely. “Looks like a love letter to me; see, look, there’s a
little heart at the bottom!”
“It reads like a
break-up letter,” Morhea corrected her.
Uh-oh. That was
definitely a sad voice. Please don’t cry.
I don’t have the slightest idea of what to do if you cry on me…
Fae cleared her
throat, “I don’t think it’s a break-up letter, Morhea.” She tried to keep her
voice kind; sometimes it was hard to remember that Morhea was a lot younger
than she was. Sometimes it was very easy to forget that because she looked younger than Morhea, talking to
Morhea like she was the younger party would be slightly belittling. “If it was
a break-up letter, I don’t think he’d have put ‘I’ll be back (P.S. I said that in a Terminator voice.)’” She tapped
the paper and chanced a glance up at Morhea.
The woman looked
like she’d swung back around from being sad to being annoyed. Fae wondered if
she should be a little concerned at the ease with which this particular human
sometimes flipped from one set of emotions to the next.
“He didn’t even
say where he was going,” Morhea crossed her arms over her chest. “Or what he
was doing. Just that it was very important.” She huffed and eyed Fae with a
startling fierceness.
Uh
oh.
“What exactly
was so very important that he couldn’t send me a text message or wake me up or
something, hm? What could have been SO pressing that he had to run off without
a word?”
“Nnnephilim…things?”
Fae sank in her chair a little bit and raised her book to cover her face while
Morhea continued to fume.
“‘Something very
important...’ What does that even MEAN?”
Fae opened her
mouth to answer and then promptly closed it again. With relief, she realized
that Morhea wasn’t looking for answers so much as shouting at the air in the
hopes that she’d stumble across some in the process.
“And he had
enough time to mention the TERMINATOR but not enough to slip in a ‘hey, by the
way I’ll be gone a week. A month. A year.’” This time she pinned Fae with a
look that made the Nephilim feel like she was a butterfly on a mounting board.
“Just how long will he be gone, Fae?”
Fae curled into
a slightly tighter ball in her chair and stared fixedly at the middle of her
book.
“Fae? How long
is Raith going to be gone?”
Very slowly, Fae
lowered her book just enough that she could peek over the top of it. “Dunno?”
“You don’t
know.” Fae was certain it was supposed
to be a question. It sounded like it was supposed to be a question. An
affirmation of a kind. But it wasn’t a question. It was a needle-like
accusation . A blade that pinned Fae down by the belly and wanted to dissect
her.
She must have
made some sort of sound in the affirmative, because Morhea had very slowly
turned in her seat to face Fae dead-on. “But you know where he went.”
Son
of a weasel.
“NoIdon’tknowthat,
whywouldyouthinkIknowthat, whatevergaveyouthatimpression? Oh, gosh, I’m late
for that thing that I said I was going to go to; it was lovely t—“
Morhea took the
book from Fae’s hands and snapped it shut. “You know,” she accused. “And I’m
not giving you your book back until you either tell me or until Raith comes
back.”
Fae eyeballed
the book in Morhea’s hands. “I can’t tell you; it’s just—“she shrugged her
shoulders, trying to think of some way that she could explain to Morhea why she
couldn’t tell her where Raith went without her being offended.
Morhea wilted.
“It’s just one of those things.” Back to being sad again. At least she wasn’t
scary when she was sad.
Fae shrugged her
shoulders and gave a weak smile. “He’d have told you if he could,” she said
softly. “And he really will be back; he wouldn’t have bothered to leave you a
letter if he wasn’t coming back to be with you.”
Morhea wiped her
eyes with the hand that wasn’t clutching Fae’s book. She sniffled softly, then
took a deep breath and said, “Well…I’m just…going to have to shoot him when he
gets back then.” She laughed weakly but Fae wasn’t entirely convinced that
Morhea wasn’t, in fact, making plans to shoot Raith.
Oh,
big brother, you better hope that you come back when she’s in a dour mood, or
you’re going to be in big, big trouble.
2.
For the first
time in almost eight months, Alexa put on the foundation that covered up her
freckles. There was no need to have them splotched across her face and
shoulders for the world to see; the one person who would notice wasn’t here to
know that she was covering them.
Don’t
think about it. The voice in her head was firm and she
wanted to listen to it, but somehow she couldn’t manage.
She dabbed the
sponge in the liquid foundation and pushed her bra strap off of her shoulder so
she could cover the freckles that were there, too. Ugly things. It’s a wonder anyone looks at you. Certainly not a
surprise that he didn’t stick around.
That’s
not true, she told herself weakly. But she took another glob
of the foundation and brought it to her shoulder in a hurried, broken motion.
“Why
are you doing that?” Deacon leaned up against the door and watched her, his
expression somewhere between confused and disappointed.
“Doing
what, exactly?” she patted the bronzer compact with the large fluffy brush and
swept it along her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, following the path of
her freshly hidden freckles so that the foundation wouldn’t be quite so
noticeable.
“Why
are you covering up your freckles?” He stepped into the bathroom and moved to
stand behind her, putting his hands on her hips and resting his chin on her
makeup-less shoulder. He hadn’t shaved yet, and the short stubble on his chin
prickled her skin slightly.
“Because
they’re ugly?” She was distracted when she answered, so it had taken a moment
to realize that the somewhat flippant remark had caused his confusion to become
distinct unhappiness.
Tsking
softly, Alexa braced the heel of the hand that held her makeup brush against
the ledge of the counter and she turned her head slightly so that she could
look at his face and not just his reflection. “What’s the matter?”
“I
like your freckles.” He sounded almost boyish, but it was the sentiment behind
the words that made her pause.
“You
do?”
He nodded, his chin still pressed against her shoulder.
“Why
on earth do you like them?”
He
shrugged his shoulders slightly and wrapped his arms around her, pressing her
tightly against his chest. “I dunno, I just do. They’re you.”
The pot of
foundation slipped off of her counter top and cracked against the floor, the
sound of its impact echoing in the bathroom.
“Shit. God
fucking damn it.”
The glass pot
shattered at her feet; the tan cream inside it had splattered across the floor,
the dark green cabinets under her sink, and up her legs. The white rug in front
of the shower had a few thick globs she was certain wouldn’t come out properly.
Gingerly, Alexa
knelt to the ground and began picking up the glass pieces. Thirty-eight dollars
completely wasted, and they didn’t even make this kind of foundation n any
more.
Her fingertips
were covered with the cream, the coated glass made her palms slick.
Thirty-eight frickin’ dollars and she
wouldn’t be able to buy herself a replacement.
She told herself
that was why she was crying.
3.
It was the only
time of year he went out to open water without kicking up a fuss. He had a
small boat that he kept in a storage unit just for the occasion. It was nothing
fancy—certainly nothing that was meant for being out in open water, but Cavan
didn’t need to navigate the sea to get where he was going; he just picked the
boat up and brought it with.
They didn’t have
graves. He didn’t think that Rhea would have minded as much, his little girl
had loved the ocean, but Kaia had been one of the Earthbound. Giving his wife a
burial at sea—especially when she’d been so hesitant about leaving to begin
with—seemed unusually cruel.
But the Captain
put his foot down at keeping her body for the four weeks that it would have
taken them to reach land.
It had been hard
not to hate the man as he’d the bodies of his wife, his daughter, and his
never-to-be-born son into the weighed down sacks that would bring them to the
bottom of the ocean. It was hard for Cavan not to hate him even now. This would be so much easier if he had a
headstone to look at.
“Hello,
sweetheart.” Ages ago, barely eighteen, when he’d had to pay for passage on a
ship just for a fleeting moment at only approximately the right spot in the
open sea, it felt awkward and unnatural to talk to the empty air; but Cavan was
old now—much too old for his own good, he thought sometimes—and after more than
a thousand years of being able to bring himself to this precise spot, the
greeting felt more natural than most of what passed between his lips.
“I know I’m a
few days late; I’m sorry. I had to wait for a couple of things to sort
themselves out at the office.”
He heaved a
breath and ran both of his hands through his hair. The sun warmed his skin a
little too much for his own liking, and despite the dark sunglasses that he was
wearing, he knew he’d have a headache for several days . Vampires weren’t
always as sensitive to the sun as the legends portrayed, but they were as
vulnerable to it as any human.
Cavan leaned
over the side of the boat, wet his hands in the cool water of the Atlantic, and
rubbed the back of his neck. Then, he
turned, and pulled a burlap sack out from under the bench he was sitting on. He
fished through a large plastic bag that was settled between his feet, and he
showed the ocean each item that was in it before placing it in the bag.
“I brought you
your pomegranate. Uhm…” the plastic rustled in the wind, and he pushed it out
of the way, “Oh, apples, for Rhea, and some honey for both of you. Bread…Candy.
There’s some sort of caramel and a bit of chocolate for you; a bit of hard
fruit candies for the kids. I don’t know what The Boy likes, so I’ve just added
some little bits and bobs that I thought he’d enjoy.” He pulled a small bear from
the bag, a little wooden train whistle, a hand-painted wooden sword. “Mind he
doesn’t try to take on any sharks with that; it’s only a toy.”
Each item was
placed reverently in the burlap bag, and then Cavan took a deep breath and
pulled out another plastic bag from under his chair. “I bought you this,” he
held up the dark blue evening gown, strapless, floor length, with subtle
beadwork on the hems. And these.” He fished a couple of black boxes from the
bag and opened them to show the water a diamond necklace with matching
earrings. “They should match the ring from last year.” He put the dress and
first box carefully in the bag and then opened the second. “This is for the
girl. I know I kept promising to bring her some jewelry of her own, but it’s
hard to think of her as anything but four.” The string of pearls joined the
rest of the offerings.
Cavan rubbed his
forehead and tried not to be too bothered by the sun. He added a few heavy
rocks to the bag and then, carefully so that the knots wouldn’t come undone
later, Cavan tied and double-tied the burlap bag closed and he eased it into
the water.
For a few
moments, he held it there, in the water, not wanting to let go because when he
did, it would be time for him to go back.
That was the
rule, the agreement he had made with himself when he’d been barely more than a
child. Once he let go, he had to go back. There was no wiggle room, no time to
linger, to delve deep into the past, to think of all the promises that he was
trying to make up for not having a chance to keep. Once he let go, he had to
return to whatever life he was leading.
And if he
couldn’t?
That was another
agreement he made with himself, after he’d become a vampire, before he knew how
hard it was to actually die. If he couldn’t let go of the bag, he’d follow it
down. All the way down to the bottom of the ocean, to the place where the two
thousand years of one kept promise had rotted silently away in remembrance of
the three biggest pieces of his heart.
For a long
moment, he held the bag, then let the weight of it pull him down—to his wrist,
to his elbow, to his shoulder…
And then he let
go.
